Telegraph Short Story Club winner announced

Jo Senior's winning story about a beloved green suitcase is the victor.

Louise Doughty who runs the Telegraph Short Stort Club with the winner Jo SeniorPhoto: Jane Mingay

By Felicity Capon

7:00AM GMT 15 Feb 2013

The winner of the Telegraph Short Story competition has been announced.

Over champagne and sandwiches at the Telegraph offices in Victoria, London, Jo Senior, who wrote the story The Green Suitcase was named the first winner of the competition. Her story is a poignant piece about an elderly lady who loses her suitcase at an airport.

“I’m absolutely astounded to have won", said Senior to TheTelegraph. "The quality of entrants was so high. But it’s such a wonderful community to be a part of – it’s everything a writer could want, a very generous group.

“I really struggle with short stories so I’m amazed to have got this far. I’ve always written on and off, but I’ll definitely be embarking on a novel soon.”

Jo is the overall winner out of 12 monthly winners who had submitted stories throughout the year-long competition. They are: Victoria Maxwell, Jo Senior, Ruth Grace Megnet, Atuki Turner, Mary De Sousa, Adam Cook, Jacqueline Haskell, Mark Mullins, Brooks Rexroat, Catherine Ford, Anthony HW and Anthony Saunders. All twelve winners received a copy of Object Lessons: the Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story and Senior also won £500. Her story will be published in this Saturday’s edition of Review and is available to read online here.

Among those who attended the lunch reception was Gaby Wood, Head of Books at TheTelegraph and novelist and creative writing expert Louise Doughty, who runs the Short Story Club.

Doughty said of the competition: “I feel quite emotional. It’s so unusual for a competition to span an entire year and it really has been a wonderful year!”

There were also representatives from the publishing industry at the reception. Ajda Vucicevic from the literacy agency Bonomi Associates said of the competition: “I think it’s wonderful. There should be more of these competitions. Anything that gives unsigned writers a chance to submit their work is fantastic. I had my personal favourite, but I won’t reveal who it is, although I have been eagerly talking to them!”

Sarah Savitt, a publisher at Faber, expressed interest in the winners of the competition: “Whether a writer has participated or been shortlisted, it takes time and dedication to write and being involved in a competition like this shows great perseverance.”

The competition highlights the increasing significance being attached to the short story as a literary art form. “The short story is not necessarily a stepping-stone to the novel," Louise Doughty said. "It is a fantastic form in its own right. It allows a writer to experiment with style and narrative form. Publishers nowadays recognise that a lot of authors come via the short story.”

Mary Crisp, one of the judges, agreed: “I am a big fan of the short story as an art form. They are much less forgiving than novels – every sentence has to work, every sentence has to be crafted, and nowadays the market is there. E-books are becoming a huge gig for the short story.”

Winners and Short Story Club regulars travelled from all over the UK to attend the reception, and all of them were keen to extol the virtues of the club as a forum where writers can retain their anonymity while receiving support and criticism from fellow writers. Crucially, the club also instills some much needed discipline in the form of deadlines. One of the monthly winners, Tamsin Hope Thomson told me: “Before I joined the club I had never finished anything. I’m currently writing a novel that I can never seem to finish! But the Short Story club is a good group of people and we all encourage each other.”